Dullroar

I'm in Portland Oregon at a conference right now, but if I weren't, I'd be in NY protesting the Republicans.

Posted by Andy at 12:28 PM | Permalink

As summer starts to wind down and we begin to get bored of the Olympics (hey, not our fault - NBC's coverage sucked [again]), our thoughts return to baseball. How are those Pirates doing anyway? Best not to ask. Let's instead talk about the Pirates' glorious history. At the intersection of 2nd Avenue and Ross St. downtown, under the bridge (Boulevard of the Allies is passing above), there's a mural of 14 of the most famous Pirates.

Getting a reasonable picture of the whole mural seems to require standing in the middle of the road. But then the traffic lights block some of the mural. Here are the missing pieces:

Left side	Right side

Who are the baseball players? I don't follow baseball and I haven't lived in Pittsburgh all that long, so I don't know. (As you can see from the picture, there's a plaque, but all it explains is that the mural is a gift from the Art Institute to the city.) So I've started asking around. Here's what I've got so far, from right to left:

• Honus Wagner
• Roberto Clemente
• Bill Mazeroski
• Unknown (kneeling)
• Willie Stargell
• 9 more unknowns

By the way, as Stewart also observed, the clock and scoreboard in the left side of the mural are from Forbes Field (long demolished, but a picture survives).

As always, click on the pics for larger versions.

Posted by Andy at 09:04 PM | Permalink

As this Farscape trailer attests, Farscape is coming back! For those who don't know: Farscape was a science fiction drama on the scifi channel that got canned a year or two ago. Unlike most science fiction, it's got a lot of non-human-looking aliens (the doubters among us will call them "ugly puppets"); it's got actual emotions and character development (doubters: "attractive women in skimpy clothes"); and it doesn't solve problems with a "particle of the week" the way bad Star Trek Next Generation episodes did (doubters don't usually get far enough to notice this). Now I'm not sure it's West Wing(*) in space, but maybe it's Sports Night?

(*) I refer to West Wing when Aaron Sorkin was around, not to the post-Sorkin catastrophe that has taken the true show's place.

Posted by Andy at 08:12 PM | Permalink

It's freshman move-in day at CMU! What a great opportunity for Pittsburgh to show itself off to the thousands of parents and new students who are visiting the city (perhaps for the first time). If Pittsburgh makes a good first impression, perhaps it'll start these talented youngins on the road to loving Pittsburgh. Perhaps they'll even decide to stay in town after graduation. Who knows? Maybe first impressions are as important as everybody says they are.

Pittsburgh, how will you respond? By putting up a speed trap right outside campus, of course. On the long downhill of Forbes, right before Margaret Morrison street. Coincidentally (I'm sure all of this is one big coincidence and not, say, some CMU official's failure to pay the yearly bribe to the city), this is the road that CMU's own directions to campus suggest that visitors take to get here. Pittsburgh, you've done it again.

Posted by Andy at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sidewinder: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tape? is Jill's first post. I'm so proud (sniffle sniffle).

Posted by Andy at 10:32 AM | Permalink

I've just migrated dullroar to a new hosting provider (Vervehosting), a new version of MovableType (3.01D), and a new comment spam blocking system (MT-Blacklist). If anything's broken, please send me a shout out (andy "curly a" dullroar.org is my address). We'll see if this world is any better than the old.

One thing that my old hoster provided but the new one doesn't is a lot of backed-up storage. So now I've got to find a good backup solution for my email and weblog contents. Maybe a shell script that has the right ssh keys to download files and then burn a cd.

Posted by Andy at 01:48 PM | Permalink

You've all already heard about the John Perry Barlow interview over at Reason. But I just had to pull out this quote from the very end of the interview to point out:

In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I’m not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.

(IANAEB means I am not an evolutionary biologist, of course.)

Posted by Andy at 01:19 PM | Permalink

Remember that guy who had a bad car wreck and then was charged with murder because they found a dvd player on his dashboard. He was acquitted, but what really messed with my head for a sec is that the guy looks just like me! Check out the picture in the article.

And yes, I was joking: I don't have any missing siblings, twin or otherwise.

Posted by Andy at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In today's New York Times' Week In Review section, there's an article, Culture Wars, on Two Wheels, that tells us about the cycling styles of Bush and Kerry. All I can say is, it's about time.

As the article tells us, Kerry rides a road bike while Bush rides a mountain bike. The article also tells us that Bush falls off his bike a lot more than Kerry, though that's probably because Bush is an idiot. No no no, just kidding! It's because off-roading involves riding on rough terrain with brush, branches, large pointy rocks, and scary-looking squirrels. Anyhow, read the article and decide for yourself.

Posted by Andy at 10:54 AM | Permalink